What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

One of my friends (a very prolific quilt-top piecer) asked me about a year ago if I would like to practice machine quilting on this Irish Chain quilt that she made "for no reason". To me, Irish Chain quilts scream for some custom quilting, not just an allover design, so due to my inexperience with that kind of quilting, I told her that she might be better off asking one of our local professionals to quilt it for her instead. She didn't think so and kept after me until I finally gave in and took it home last fall to "study" it for a while. My friend understood that there was no way I could even start it before January or February.

In March I told my friend to bring me the backing and batting, which meant that my confidence level was rising...then it all sat in a bag for a couple of weeks...

I finally decided that I should get up the nerve and really plan how to work on this. In April I was ready to load it on my HQ16 and discovered that my friend had forgotten to piece the backing. Yeah -- that meant I could delay it even longer! If I really liked piecing backings, I would have done it for her, but I don't really like to do that, especially when the quilt is so big (this quilt is about 90 x 1 billion inches -- well, actually more like 90 x 110 or so). I could relax for a couple of weeks..and thought that maybe my friend would get frustrated with the delays and take it to someone who knew what she was doing...

My friend didn't get the message and brought it back to me with a pieced backing and I loaded it on my HQ16 early this month...it sat there for a while...I just kept looking at it and shaking my head.

On Tuesday of this week, I turned on the machine and got to work on the first border. I did a beadboard design and am quite pleased with how it turned out. I quilted a couple more borders and on Thursday started on the body of the quilt. Not perfect, but satisfactory.

These photos show what I've done so far...there's a long way to go yet...this is such a BIG quilt...